Rants and raves about the mess of higher education in the United States.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

For-Profit College Degrees Are Worthless

By Professor
Doom

I’ve often said for-profit colleges
generally offer worthless degrees at an extreme price, but I hate simply
expecting the reader to trust my word on such things. A recent article, mainstream news
even, gave some nice
examples of the over-the-top uselessness of these degrees.

Students across the
country are shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for degrees that end up
being completely worthless.

I do want to point out, however, that
non-profit schools, while cheaper, also offer a great number of degrees that
are, in terms of the marketplace, completely worthless. Back when higher
education was cheap, this was not a problem…tuition was low enough that “work
your way through college” at a fast food place was quite possible. But now that
campuses are overrun with 6- and 7-figure salaried administrators (and 4-figure
paid adjuncts teaching the actual courses), there are huge disconnects between
the cost of education that students pay, the cost that is actually paid to the
educators, and, most importantly, the quality of the education that the
students receive. For-profits may be the worst, but a great many state
institutions are only a few shades better.

…So at age 23, she enrolled in a two-year criminal justice program
at for-profit Everest College in Chesapeake, Va. But the wealth of job opportunities the school had touted never
transpired, and all she ended up with was more than $22,000 in student loan
debt. She said classes were terrible, she didn't receive any of the training
she needed, …

Criminal Justice is a popular field,
because it can provide entry into the incredibly lucrative “law enforcement”
industry (law enforcement, health care, and education are really the big job
producers in last few decades of extreme government growth…do note government
is now in the process of wrapping more of its tentacles around health care even
as you read this). I had the pleasure of teaching an entire class full of
police officers when one of my institutions set up a Criminal Justice outreach
program. I know the police are often (and often justifiably) vilified, but, for
what it’s worth, they are better than average as students (they are also
slightly older, which may well be the important factor).

Back to the point, the above poor student
shelled out over $20,000 for coursework, supposedly job-related coursework,
which provided none of the training or education she needed to get an actual
job. Of course, the student didn’t actually pay that money. Instead, it was
provided via a student loan.

This is quite common, and so, for the sake
of new readers, allow me to explain the game being played. The first thing a
school does when it opens its doors is work to get accredited. Only accredited
schools can qualify their students for the various Federal student aid
programs, including those all-important student loans.

Before the school becomes accredited, the
school keeps tuition low, because it needs to attract students, and being
affordable helps with that. The school also tries to be reasonably legitimate,
as far as the education it provides. It needs this because accreditors need to
have some reason to believe the school is legitimate before they will award
full accreditation.

Once the school becomes accredited, it all
changes. First, the school jacks up the tuition to as much as they can get away
with, which usually means whatever the student loan money available is. Then,
the school sacrifices all integrity, annihilating all educational standards,
the better to draw in, and keep, students that think that merely because
they’re getting good grades, they’re actually learning something relevant.

While the article focuses on for-profit
schools, it’s the same pattern at many state and non-profit schools. I totally
grant that there are many exceptions, but they
are exceptions. Having worked to bring a school through the accreditation
process and seen what happens once accreditation is awarded, my own eyes tell
me that this pattern is the reality of higher education today…state schools often have a harder
time increasing tuition, and that’s the ONLY reason they’re cheaper than the for-profit schools.
But, otherwise, the pattern is the same.

You might be wondering how the bogus
schools can keep accreditation, but the reason behind this is simple:
accredited schools generally self-report their legitimacy, and only need do so
every 5 to 10 years. So, the bogus school self-reports that their students are
getting good grades, self-reports that their students are getting good jobs,
self-reports that their coursework is of the highest standards, and so on…and
accreditors are perfectly happy with this.

Of course, the rubber meets the road when
it comes time to actually pay off those student loans, and that’s where
problems become visible in a way that self-reporting won’t work. There’s a big
difference between words on paper and checks for actual money, after all.

“…student loan default rate (of up to
27% for its Everest College campuses) is lower than other community colleges
and its graduation and job placement rates are higher…”

So, at this school, the self-reported
graduation and job placement rates are (supposedly) as good as any community
college (that’s a low, low, bar, since many community colleges “boast” a lower
than 10% graduation rate). The student loan default rate, however, is not so
easily buried, since someone has to write an actual check.

Despite what’s said here, for-profit
schools generally have a worse default rate than state schools. While it is
claimed that this is due to the bogus nature of the for-profit coursework, I
find this assertion dubious, as I’ve shown and seen many times that the coursework
in state schools to be comparably bogus. No, the reason for the higher default
rate is very simple: students at for-profit schools are charged more for
tuition, and thus get deeper into debt. It is simply the larger debts that
explain the higher default rates.

But, back to the article:

“…the school spent six months convincing him to enroll --
promising to provide all the training and help he needed to find a high-paying
computer science job…But upon enrolling in the computer science program, he said the
quality of education "was a complete joke" and job assistance was
nonexistent…”

The main expense of for-profit schools
isn’t on education (like state schools, they pay the highly educated teachers
very little), it’s on recruiting suckers/students to enroll. Google’s biggest
customer, for example, is the for-profit University of Phoenix, which spends $200,000 a day on
Google advertising. My own
research on for-profits rather backfired on me—much like the luckless student
involved, I too endured (and still endure) many phone calls from for-profits
hoping to make a sale with me.

This is how the for-profits overcome their
well-deserved reputation for worthlessness—extensive advertising for suckers
that don’t know what they’re getting into.

“…after accumulating
more than $20,000 in debt to attend the one-year program, he wasn't able to
find a single job in computer science. He's still unemployed, is now homeless
-- and he is convinced he'd be better off without the degree even listed on his
resume.

He says multiple employers have told him that they don't view his
degree as credible because of the for-profit industry's reputation and because
other people they've hired from the school haven't had the necessary skills for
the job…”